6 Zooarchaeology
6.1 Case studies
The following map shows the sites under investigation, divided by chronology. Please select the desired chronology (or chronologies) from the legend on the right.
Legend: R = Roman, LR = Late Roman, EMA = Early Middle Ages, Ma = 11th c. onwards
6.2 Medians
The faunal dataset is large (385+ records) and is diversified. Looking at the distributions of each animal, the curve is not gaussian. The best choice for non-normal curves is to use medians instead of means to come up with figures that are less dependent on outliers. The function Medians_Chrono_Zoo() (Section 2.1) can be used to return as output weighted medians for each chronology. The in-depth description of how weights are calculated for each sample can be found in Section 4.5.1. To summarise, sites with a very large (i.e. fuzzy) chronology contribute less to the calculation of the median. Table 6.1 provides the median values of the main categories of faunal remains for each chronology, and Table 6.2 the median values for each century. Stronger colours in the cells indicate higher values.
Show the code
Medians_Categorised_per_Chronology_ZOO <-
data.frame(
Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "R")*100,
Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "LR")*100,
Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "EMA")*100,
Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "Ma")*100
)
# Round to 4 digits
Medians_Categorised_per_Chronology_ZOO <- round(Medians_Categorised_per_Chronology_ZOO, 2)
## Weighted medians per century ##
Medians_ZOO_Centuries <- data.frame(
"I BCE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, -1)$Medians,
"I CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 1)$Medians,
"II CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 2)$Medians,
"III CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 3)$Medians,
"IV CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 4)$Medians,
"V CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 5)$Medians,
"VI CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 6)$Medians,
"VII CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 7)$Medians,
"VIII CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 8)$Medians,
"IX CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 9)$Medians,
"X CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 10)$Medians,
"XI CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 11)$Medians
)
# Assigning the colnames (optional - instead of roman numerals)
colnames(Medians_ZOO_Centuries) <- c("1st c. BCE", "1st c. CE", "2nd c.", "3rd c.", "4th c.", "5th c.", "6th c.", "7th c.", "8th c.", "9th c.", "10th c.", "11th c.")
# Rounding the medians
Medians_ZOO_Centuries <- round(Medians_ZOO_Centuries, digits=2)
# Removing categories that are not necessary
Medians_ZOO_Centuries <- Medians_ZOO_Centuries[-c(6:9),]| R | LR | EMA | Ma | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pigs 
|
47.87 | 36.00 | 35.24 | 34.00 |
Cattle 
|
11.00 | 9.00 | 18.00 | 19.71 |
Caprine 
|
25.00 | 23.36 | 29.00 | 27.00 |
Dom..Fowl 
|
4.00 | 5.00 | 5.00 | 7.68 |
Edible.W..Mammals 
|
5.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 |
Fish 
|
1.00 | 2.00 | 3.87 | 1.00 |
Mollusca 
|
11.00 | 8.05 | 4.00 | 2.03 |
Unedible.Dom..Mammals 
|
2.00 | 3.52 | 3.34 | 2.00 |
Unedible.Wild.Mammals 
|
1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
In each chronology, pigs always represent the main faunal remain in the samples from the Italian peninsula, although their median values decreases after the Roman age peak.
| Pigs | Cattle | Caprine | Domestic fowl | Wild game | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st c. BCE | 36.30 | 10.35 | 22.20 | 0.00 | 2.62 |
| 1st c. CE | 39.06 | 11.10 | 25.49 | 0.25 | 0.87 |
| 2nd c. | 41.57 | 10.28 | 24.47 | 0.79 | 0.23 |
| 3rd c. | 35.39 | 8.92 | 20.34 | 1.51 | 0.97 |
| 4th c. | 32.81 | 10.05 | 24.49 | 1.88 | 1.30 |
| 5th c. | 33.50 | 18.29 | 27.57 | 2.33 | 1.30 |
| 6th c. | 33.43 | 21.46 | 28.72 | 2.73 | 0.79 |
| 7th c. | 30.43 | 20.19 | 30.10 | 4.56 | 1.50 |
| 8th c. | 33.63 | 14.70 | 30.27 | 2.70 | 1.42 |
| 9th c. | 36.37 | 14.36 | 23.53 | 0.58 | 1.55 |
| 10th c. | 35.67 | 14.90 | 25.73 | 0.83 | 1.91 |
| 11th c. | 33.72 | 19.57 | 27.39 | 1.67 | 2.09 |
| * The color gradients in this table are used to indicate the chronologies. |